Object Thinking

In OBJECT THINKING, esteemed object technologist David West contends that the mindset makes the programmer—not the tools and techniques. Delving into the history, philosophy, and even politics of object-oriented programming, West reveals how the best programmers rely on analysis and conceptualization—on thinking—rather than formal process and methods.

The real value of the object idea was in the area of design, not programming.

This book focuses on the identification and design of objects and the use of those objects to create the “radically different solutions and architectures” promised by Grady Booch in his 1991 book Object Oriented Analysis — the first widely read book on object-oriented development.

Objects were supposed to be identified and designed around their behavior (not the animated data entities that came to dominate OO programming) and this book shows why and how to create robust behavioral objects. The primary advantages of this approach are simplicity, compose-ability, and adaptability.

PDF downloads — text only, not the figures — of each chapter are available.

Four presuppositions: 1) everything is an object, 2) decomposition based on behavior as differentiation criterion, 3) objects must be composable, 4) hierarchical control must be replaced with coordination and cooperation; object principles, software principles; and cooperating cultures.

The LEGO Block metaphor; (sidebar: how many objects); object as person metaphor; software as theater, programmers as directors; ants, not autocrats; inheritance and responsibility; and thinking like an object.